North! Or Be Eaten (43 page)

“Quiet, birdman,” growled one of the Grey Fangs, “or we’ll run you through.”

Artham knew they wouldn’t, not after all the trouble they’d gone through to bring him there, so he screeched even louder.

“I said silence him!” the Stone Keeper commanded.

Two of the Fangs took hold of his talons and jerked his arms through the cage. His face slammed into the bars and they pinned him there. One of the Fangs put his paw over Artham’s face, which didn’t stop the screeching, but muffled it. Try as he might to see Tink, it was no use; Fangs surrounded the cage.

Artham realized that neither the Stone Keeper nor the Fangs understood the High King of Anniera was in their grasp. They thought he was just another boy. Artham stopped struggling. Perhaps it was better if they didn’t know who Tink was. But if they knew—if they knew, then maybe they wouldn’t send him into the box.

“Which is it, then? First you say you’ll comply, and now you struggle,” said the
Stone Keeper to Artham. “You value yourself more than these children? Fine. We’ll make
you
watch. Bring a wolf !”

Through the cluster of Fangs, Artham caught a glimpse of the Stone Keeper extending her hand.

“You, little boy,” she said in a soothing voice. “Come nearer.”

He heard each footstep as Tink climbed the stairs.

“Tmmmmk!” Artham sobbed into the Fang’s paw. “Tmmmmmk!” The Fang punched Artham in the face so hard that his vision blurred.

“Don’t pay any attention to them, child,” he heard the Stone Keeper say. “Keep your eyes on me.”

“All right,” Tink said.

“What’s your name, child?” asked the Stone Keeper.

Artham froze. He wondered what the woman would do when Tink told her his name. Would she recognize him?

“Uh, Weaver,” Tink said in a small voice.

“Where are you from, Weaver?” asked the woman. Tink was silent. Artham heard the
skritch
of the Fang beside the dais writing Tink’s answers in the book. “It’s all right. It’s been a terrible journey, hasn’t it, boy? But the journey is over. You will soon have a new home, and a new name, and great strength. Would that please you?”

“Yeah,” Tink answered quietly.

“No,” Artham slurred through the Fang’s paw.
No!
his inner voice screamed.

“Come inside with me and fear no more,” said the Stone Keeper.

Tink sighed. “Yes ma’am.”

Artham heard the iron door squeak open. He heard Tink walk inside. He heard the door close behind him.

And then he heard the first notes of the dreadful song of the ancient stones.

L
eeli lowered the whistleharp from her lips, and the image in Janner’s mind disappeared.

“What do you see when Leeli plays?” asked Nia, leaning forward.

“Pictures,” Janner said with a shrug. “But it’s not every time she plays, and all three times it’s been a different song.”

“Three times?” Leeli said. “I only remember it happening with the sea dragons.”

“It happened again when you were in the mountains,” Janner said, smiling at the surprise on Leeli’s face. “I saw you all. I didn’t understand what I was seeing, and I didn’t want to believe it, but I saw you in the snow, high in the mountains. At the same time I saw Tink in the Strander cage.”

“In the Strander cage?” Podo growled. “Was it them who turned him over to the blasted Carriage?”

“Yes sir,” Janner said quietly, and Podo’s chest rumbled. “Mama, why does Leeli’s song do that? Is it magic?”

Nia smiled. “What’s magic, anyway? If you asked a kitten, ‘How does a bumblebee fly?’ the answer would probably be ‘Magic.’ Aerwiar is full of wonders, and some call it magic. This is a gift from the Maker—it isn’t something Leeli created or meant to do, nor did you mean to see these images. You didn’t seek to bend the ways of the world to your will. You stumbled on this thing, the way a kitten happens upon a flower where a bumblebee has lit. This is like the water from the First Well. The music Leeli makes has great power, but it is clear the Maker put the power there when He knit the world. If it seems as though we have uncovered some secret, it is only because the wars of the ages concealed what was once as common as grass.”

“Aye,” said Oskar. “I’ve learned much from your First Book, lad. Much about Aerwiar and the cause of its breaking. Anyara—Anniera—was such a bright city, my boy. Justice and gladness were the jewels in its crown.” He removed his spectacles and wiped the corner of his eye. “But Ouster Will laid waste to it all. He saw the gifts the Maker gave, corrupted them, and bent them to his own will. But that was much later,”
he said as he replaced his spectacles. “When the city was bright, the children sang music that made flowers change color overnight. Other children wrote poetry that it was said raised the great stone arches of the city gates. Still others painted pictures that, when the right child sang the right song or read the right tale,
moved
.”

“The pictures moved?” Leeli asked breathlessly.

“That’s what it said,” Oskar told them in a whisper, “and I believe it.” He looked from Janner to Leeli with shining eyes. “All my life I’ve wanted to believe the stories are true. I’ve never been able to quiet the pleasurable ache between my heart and my stomach that I felt as a boy when I read these tales. And now that I am wrapped up in the Wingfeather saga, that ache has grown so that I can hardly bear it. Here I sit in the presence of queens and heroes and
magic
. Yes, magic. It is only when we have grown too old that we fail to see that the Maker’s world is swollen with magic—it hides in plain sight in music and water and even bumblebees.”

“I have seen many things, child,” said Nia, and a faraway look came into her eyes. “Wonderful things. The old stories might call it magic, but I call it beauty. I might even call it love.” She blinked and came back to herself. “That you can see these things when she plays is a gift. Never try to become its master, but serve it. Allow it to be what the Maker meant it to be.”

Janner’s mind spun with a thousand questions. Why did Leeli’s song only work some of the time? Why did Oskar say it was only children whose songs and poems and paintings had power? Was Tink in the Black Carriage? What were they going to do?

“Are we gonna sit here and blather about kittens all day?” Podo asked impatiently. “We came here to fetch Janner for dinner, if ye recall.”

“Yes, yes,” said Oskar, rubbing his chubby hands together. “Might we continue this discussion over cider and garp chowder? I have much to tell you about your First Book, Janner! On page twenty-seven your mother and I translated some old whistle-harp music—a song called ‘Yurgen’s Tune,’ as far as we could tell. Imagine our surprise when Leeli played it and it was very like an old nursery melody your mother used to sing to you. Think of it!” Oskar jiggled with excitement. “And of course we need to learn about what happened to you, and we may have planning to do. ‘Learn and plan over food if you can,’ said the great R. T. Crunk. I’m inclined to agree.”

Everyone laughed, but Janner’s stomach growled at the mention of food, which made them all think of Tink again. They filed from the room in silence.

Kimera was a maze of round tunnels. Because many of the walls were made of ice and hard-packed snow, light from lanterns that lined the walkways fragmented and scattered, giving the impression that the city was high in the sky, cut from cloud and
sunlight, and not deep in the ground. Janner was cold, but not as cold as he might’ve thought. There was no wind. He realized that for days he had slept outside and walked outside, contending with an eternal, biting wind that cut through every layer of wolf skin he wore. Kimera was warm by comparison.

A delicious smell wafted through the bright tunnel and grew stronger with every step. They passed several wooden doors, set into the hard ice just as they would have set in a wooden frame.

“Oy,” said Podo as he led the company past two men with buckets of water. They wore leggings but no shirts. Their chests were hairy and broad as a bomnubble’s, bigger even than Podo’s. Their hair was long, but their beards were longer, and though their faces were hard and cold, they broke into fine, handsome smiles at Podo’s greeting.

“Oy back at you, old man,” said one of the men as he splashed an entire bucket of water at the wall. The water crackled and turned to ice before it reached the floor. The other man dipped a rag into his bucket and rubbed the wall smooth.

“They get fresh water from a wellhouse, deep underground. Gets warmer the deeper you go. Ain’t that surprising?” Podo said. As they walked he explained how the Kimerans repaired the ice walls and how they got food either by hunting or fishing.

“Fishing? Are we near the Dark Sea?” Janner asked.

“Yes and no,” he said. “These garp are from a river they say runs beneath the ice near the city. That’s where they get most of their food. As for the sea, if we walked across the surface it would take days, but that’s only because the ice stretches for miles over the water.

“The Kimerans are smarter than that, though. Epochs ago they cut tunnels that led to the Dark Sea, great caverns in the ice where waves lap at a frozen shore. In fact, there used to be a Kimeran port before the war. Sailors could steer their ships right into an icy corridor just wide enough for the oars, then row for miles through a white canyon.” Podo’s voice changed, and Janner didn’t need to ask if the old pirate had been there himself. “At the end of the canyon is the mouth of a tunnel, and the maddest captains would wait until low tide and sail right in. Miles the tunnel went, right to the port at Kimera, where there was always good trade and garp chowder to warm the bones.”

“Speaking of chowder,” said Oskar, and they rounded a bend in the iceway and stopped at a set of giant wooden doors.

Podo pushed them open, and Janner’s senses were assaulted. Hundreds of people
sat at long candlelit tables, laughing, shouting, singing, and chattering. The domed ceiling was smooth as glass, and just transparent enough that Janner could see the orange glow of the setting sun at the western edge. The sunlight gave all the Kimerans a happy radiance that deepened even as Janner watched. The stone walls glistened with water that melted from the icy dome and trickled into a gutter that lined the perimeter of the floor and sent the runoff away through a culvert.

The air was thick with the rich scent of garp chowder, but he also smelled hot bread and the glad aroma of a fire. On the opposite side of the room sat the largest fireplace he had ever seen. The opening was as tall as a man and wide as a barn door, and whole trees crackled in a fire so warm that Janner felt it on his face from the opposite side of the room. It was made of sea-smoothed stones, gray and black and layered with patterned shades. The chimney soared upward into the ice. Above the fireplace was an enormous mantel on which lay an arrangement of the bones of a large creature Janner couldn’t identify.

“What’s that?” he asked. “The bones, I mean.”

“A sea dragon,” said Oskar.

“It’s too small,” Janner said. “The dragons are enormous.”

“That’s because,” Oskar said sadly, “it was one of their young. Not more than a few years old. Many years ago, baby sea dragons fetched a high price. They were nearly impossible to catch, but their hides were worth more than many jewels. The meat of a young sea dragon was one of the finest delicacies in all of Skree. Only the wealthiest could afford it.”

“That’s terrible,” said Leeli.

“It was, dear,” said Nia. “The kings of Anniera, it is said, once had an alliance with the sea dragons. For epochs Annierans tried to renew the old alliance, but they didn’t know how to communicate with the beasts. Still, our people always believed that of all the Maker’s creatures, the sea dragons were sacred.” Her voice darkened. “But to the dragon hunters there was nothing sacred but riches. Wicked men will do anything for money. Annierans despised the dragon hunters and were right to do so.”

Janner shivered. The dragons were creatures of such terrible beauty. He couldn’t imagine killing one, let alone one of their young.

“This is the oldest part of the city,” said a familiar voice from just inside the room. Dressed in black, Gammon leaned against the wall with his arms folded, smiling at Janner. “It’s the one room in all the city where we can burn the driftwood as hot as we like and not worry about the walls melting.” He pointed at the ceiling. “We
pump water from the well to a fountain that pours onto the glass dome night and day. The air outside is so cold that it stays thick and clear no matter how warm it gets down here.”

“Gammon,” Podo said in greeting, “you’ve done a great work here. I can’t tell ye how fine it is to live in a city with no Fangs. Skree is lucky to have such a one as yourself.”

Janner wasn’t used to Podo speaking to another man in such a way. The old pirate actually liked him. Janner was glad, because he liked Gammon too. In the Stony Mountains he had placed his trust in the man, and he was relieved to see that Podo would have approved.

“Thank you, Podo. I’m glad you’re here. Make yourself at home. Kimera is a free city, as free as Skree before the war, and as free as Skree will one day be again. Janner, you’re probably wondering about Maraly. That’s her at the table by the wall.”

Janner was shocked to see a girl in a red dress. Her hair was still boyish and short but clean and adorned with a string of pearls. If Gammon hadn’t pointed her out, he never would have recognized her. Beneath all the dirt and meanness, Maraly was quite pretty. Then she leaned over, snorted, and spat on the floor beside the table. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and shoveled a lumpy spoonful of chowder into her mouth. A glop of it landed in her lap and she scooped it up with her fingers and licked them clean, then absentmindedly wiped her fingers on the front of her dress as she scooped up another spoonful. Janner smiled.

Nia raised one eyebrow. “I see we have some work to do with that one.”

The Igiby family joined Maraly at the table, and three Kimeran women appeared with steaming bowls of garp chowder and mugs of cider.

It was the finest meal Janner had ever eaten. If he hadn’t been sitting next to his mother, he would have gobbled the food just like Maraly, but he forced himself to keep his back straight and take modest bites. Several times during the meal, various men, women, and children stopped at the table to welcome Janner and Maraly. They were kind and respectful, especially to Nia, who was most clearly some kind of royalty.